I truly struggles between a 4 and 5 star rating for this book. I wish all of the book review applications had a 1/2 star rating. I freaking LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Max Hartley. In the Epilogue, he is kind of immature and clearly uncomfortable. But as the story unfolds, he is truly a gentleman with a great heart and a huge capacity for love and forgiveness.

Now Ms. Lina (Carolina) Santos, that was a whole other subject. She's a strong and bullish young lady. As Lina's story unfolds the reader is drawn into all the things that have happened to her to shape the unemotional, but highly organized wedding planner that she has become.

I loved the chemistry these two had from the beginning. I literally read this book and laughed out loud as some of the scenes played out..... I got lots of side-eye from my husband and had to explain the pepper scene, etc.

As someone who works with Brazilians daily and recently returned from Rio, it was awesome to read about some of the foods, drinks, and cultural traditions I have grown to love over the years because of my experiences with my peers and traveling to Brazil.

There was a Happy-ending, even though there was a lot of angst and many situations to keep Max and Lina apart. Awesome story-telling.

Not my favorite romance novel & I freely admit I love a good romance novel! The dialogue was not believable, the story line was uninspired & although I did love the references to Brazilian culture I didn't feel like they were integrated well. It could have been a much better book.

I had a lot of fun with this title. I started and finished it in a day - couldn't put it down. The lead characters were fun and relatable. The road to the HEA was believable. I wish there were more about Lina's family since they were a delight. Overall, loved it and I can't wait to recommend to my patrons who love romance.

The Worst Best Man

Let’s just jump right in and talk about what I loved about The Worst Best Man!

I loved the depths that the author gave to Lina. She was an incredibly well-rounded character. She had a loving and entertaining family but she also had generations of strong women unwittingly adding guilt and pressure to succeed built into her character. Lina had an incredible work ethic and she doesn’t just drop everything once the romance begins in earnest, although there are some questionable judgement calls because comedy must ensue. Her business is an essential part of the plot and I’m so glad that the author has her actually working throughout the book (the working girl who is never written working in romance books is a pet peeve of mine). And even though Lina aims to be focused and composed she is given layers of emotion to be peeled back and explored. It all added up to a fantastic character.

I loved the Brazilian heritage and culture that was written in to the story. I loved the hijinks and funny moments, there were some great opportunities for petty revenge in the enemies-to-lovers sections. And

Now on to the things that I didn’t like... some of the dialogue was stilted and contrived. It just didn’t flow naturally. And Max didn’t seem to have a distinct voice, everyone just sounded alike actually. All of the males felt like they were written by a woman, their tones and verbiage just sounded off to me. And that tends to take me out of a story as I’m reading.

I also wanted more from a couple sections of the book. I wanted more interaction between Max and his brother. I wanted the rivalry and consequential situations to blow up bigger and louder. I wanted more from their mom’s presence, especially some scenes between her and Lina.

I wanted more to be built around the ex-fiancé situation. Lina and Max both think so heavily about how it will look dating the brother of her ex-fiancé but besides said brother, absolutely no one indicates they give a flying fig. Just a few judgmental people or comments sprinkled in would have given so much more to this perceived obstacle and made the ending sweeter.

I think I just wanted a few more hurdles for them to jump and overcome to really bind their new love together and give the reader more to hold on to. While Max’s inner turmoil was interesting and the final job interview was concerning, I’m not sure it was enough for me.

So overall I liked the story but it was a bit of a back and forth. However, I’m definitely going to need to look into lime green wedding dresses. Some of the details the author threw in were forever memorable. Ha.

I absolutely adored this book. This was a brother's fiance/oh no one bed/jilted at the altar book that met my expectations. It was steamy. The romance did built over time. I liked that we had a heroine connected to her culture. My only complaint is that I have to wait a year and change for the next book in the series.

Lina gets jilted at the altar and the one that delivers the news, is the best man, Max. Yeah not a great start for someone who is a wedding planner, she didn't plan for her soon-to-be-husband to run away.

Move forward 10 years and Lina is flourishing as a wedding planner when hotel owner asks her for an interview to possibly do weddings at the hotel. There's a hitch she has to convince the owner how to sell herself as a wedding concierge with the help of a marketing team. Oh and what team would that be? Well known other than her ex-fiance and his brother's firm.

Lina teams up with Max (the best man), but there is a lot of mischief with her and she is maybe a little annoyed with the ex-best man. But Lina see something different from Max than her former fiance. These enemies-to-lovers had plenty of banter and the sexy times was hot.

Mia Sosa is a new-to-me author and I will definitely be reading some more of her books.

*An ARC was received via Net Galley for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for sending me an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Let me start this review saying that it's fairly rare for anything to make me laugh out loud but this book managed to achieve that. I loved the mix of culture and snappy and at times biting dialogue. It was a very fun read.

We cut to three years ago with Max as he wakes up to a text message from his brother Andrew, who is supposed to be getting married that morning, basically telling him "Thanks to you, I can see the truth now. I can't marry Lina. Need you to break the news."

Max ultimately tells Lina and, rightfully so, gets blamed for Andrew's cold feet.

Now in present day, Lina is shining in her role as wedding planner, even though her own wedding never happened. While on the job she's approached by Rebecca Cartwright about a job to be the official planner on staff for the hotel chain that she heads. Two downsides. One, she has to interview for the position and pitch her business to Rebecca. Two, Andrew, her ex-fiance and his brother Max are the marketing firm that she's paired to work with. They're also vying for Rebecca's business.

Max is in competition with Andrew, or it always feels that way. He sees this as an opportunity to shine and step out of his brother's shadow. When he's paired with Lina, things start to unravel as the pair realizes that the animosity between them because of their difficult past is slowly giving way to real undeniable chemistry. Max has to decide if potentially falling for his brother's ex-fiance fits into his plan of making a name for himself away from his brother's influence.

This book would be really easy to read in a single sitting. The writing is funny and everything flows effortlessly. It's told in alternating points of view, Max and Lina, and I was always able to tell them apart from their personalities. The way that Max and Lina start to connect was very sweet and felt realistic, aside from the soap opera-ish elephant in the room in the way of her ex-fiance.

There is a teaser at the end that the next book in the series is a story about Max's friend Dean, which I know is a common thing with romance novels. Up until now I kinda of ignored it, the characters chosen didn't really interest me, but I'm honestly interested in hearing more about Dean.

This book was so good! I laughed, I cried, I gasped, and I aww’d our loud. When I started reading, I thought there was no real way for me to get behind Max, but then I did! And I loved that there was never a love triangle with Andrew or any possible mixup with anyone else. And that little twist towards the end? Yes! Highly recommend this!!!

With a great cover and a blurb that drew me in, I was so excited to read this... and ultimately disappointed in the execution. The book starts out on a high note with humor and a very awkward situation for our hero, but as the story moved along it got bogged down by unnecessary detail and subplots that detracted from the romance. There were many times I found myself skimming, and while the bones of a good rom com are there - the actual relationship between Max and Lina was fun to read - all the clutter got in the way.

The story follows Lina, a wedding planner who has the misfortune of being dumped on her wedding day - by proxy. When her groom gets cold feet, he texts his brother, Max, to ask that he deliver the news, saying that Max’s advice the night prior pushed him into making this decision. Though Max doesn’t remember that drunken conversation, he steps up and delivers the news, sharing almost as much of Lina’s wrath as his brother does. Three years pass and the brothers are tasked with working with Lina on a business project. Since Max is (marginally) the lesser of two evils for Lina, they wind up working together and getting to know each other for the first time. Along the way, they can’t help but wonder if things would’ve been different had Lina met Max first.

There’s a definite enemies to lovers feel to the story, which I really enjoyed. The encounters between Lina and Max were the highlight of the book, they were just too few and far between. There’s a lot of detail relating to things I couldn’t care less about, and the continued use of Portuguese at the start of the book took me out of the story. I don’t mind the inclusion of details about Lina’s heritage, but without looking the words up it’s often difficult to follow the conversation. I liked the slow burn romance, but the payoff wasn’t there - their first sex scene is not at all sexy, and things move pretty quickly after that. Overall, it has the foundation of a good book but I would’ve liked it a lot more with a few changes. Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with an ARC. I am voluntarily leaving a review of this rom com.

After being jilted at the altar, what is to be blamed on her fiancee's brother Max, Lina works successful as a wedding planer. When she gets approached with an offer of a lifetime, she is forced to work together with Max, the best man at her wedding who caused her fiancee to run away.

First person POV from each protagonist in present tense.
Language: profane

This is a delightful Enemies to Lovers RomCom. Carolina “Lina” Santos is a woman who is always in control. When she gets a great job opportunity, she ends up having to work with her almost brother-in-law Max Hartley. Since Lina partially blames Max for being unceremoniously dumped on her wedding day, she isn’t thrilled working with him. This is a nice set up for a romance with a lot of laughs. I loved Max! He is in an unhealthy competition his older brother Andrew, so falling for his brother’s ex is a problem. Lina was a little harder to warm up too, but since her character is always trying to lock down her emotion, that makes sense. This was my first book by this author, and I will definitely be reading her other books. I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley for my honest review.

Overall, this was a good read. I enjoyed the storyline but I felt there were a lot of pieces that were skimmed over or left out.
Sosa made me feel connected to the main characters which is probably why I read this book start to finish in less than 24 hours.
If you need a quick, light-hearted read then pick up this book! This book is pure enjoyment but probably won't change your life if you read it.

The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa is a novel involving a slow-building enemies-to-friends relationship that transitions into a well-paced romance. The character development throughout the story of the main characters, Lina and Max was brilliant and allowed the reader to understand their actions and emotions. The supporting characters—especially Lina’s family—were hilarious. The Worst Best Man offers the reader pages of humor and fun—but also provides a story of vulnerability about love and self-reflection that is so refreshing and necessary. Mia Sosa has a definite hit on her hands with this novel.

Usually I inhale books like this. Cute cover. Fun, romantic comedy. But this took me several evenings of reading a chapter here or there to feel any urgency to finish. I really thought the story had potential but the writing dragged. The heroine, Lina, is a complicated woman and I really, really wanted to like her as she survived being broken up with on her own wedding day by the best man, she’s a good friend, hard worker, smart businesswoman, and is loyal to her family—but the telling on every page of her heritage, being jilted at the altar, and her dislike for the bearer of bad news, Max, from her wedding day, became repetitive and felt forced, and so I never connected with her.

Some scenes were so long detailing other characters and Lina’s relationship with them or with her Brazilian culture that I often felt like skimming to find names like Max, Andrew, Rebecca, Cartwright—just to get to the next topic that would hopefully drive the story forward. Heck, I didn’t even realize until chapter 20 that Lina identified as a black woman, Afro-Latinx—because her Brazilian heritage is so profuse throughout. Even in chapter 10, after the Capoeira instructor offers a long explanation of the martial arts form originating from enslaved Africans in Brazil, I still never made a connection that Lina’s family is bi-racial. It wouldn’t have made me like the main character more or not but with all the copious details about food, preparation of delicacies, music and dance, and family dynamics, I wish the author made a better visual depicting Lina earlier on.

I liked the ex-best man most of the time except the scene in chapter 15 when he realizes he is so turned on by Lina, his new business partner nee brother’s ex-fiancé, that he goes to his best friend’s to help sort out his feelings and ends up asking Dean if he can sleep in his huge bed with him because he is worried he will masterbate thinking about her and won’t be able to look her in the face at work the next day... “Let me sleep in here tonight. Your bed is huge.” I just did not buy that “man-bonding” sleepover. I think it was supposed to be cute or endearing but I just found it cringy.

And then there is that scene when Lina is trying to maneuver around Max in a pickup truck cab and her hand lands on his crotch. And rather than pull her hand away, she is incapable of doing anything but be mortified about it until the vehicle is turned off and the driver exits the truck and she notices Max’s breathing is audible and he asks her to “unhand” him and then she turns to meet his eyes and then gasps, yelps, and finally unhands him. Again, the humor seems heavy handed (pun intended).

Finally in chapter 22 when they do end up in bed, it really is the most drawn out sex scene because of all the open discussion about what she likes and doesn’t like: “I don’t enjoy it when men jab their tongue in as though they’re poking a bee’s nest with a stick. Or when they munch on me like a crunchy snack they can find at a concession stand. Cunnilingus is an art. It requires imagination and nuance. Oh I love it when a person talks dirty to me as they do it—in small doses, of course, because I’d obviously want you to be focused on the task at hand.” And so that’s how it “went down”—on and on like that. Max must have had the patience of a saint to listen to all that and still want her because I closed my kindle and came back to it the next night.

I am glad I read it through NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity. I’m glad there was a happily-ever-after that tied up all into a nice bow. But frankly I was disappointed. I expected better. Less is more.

Rated mature for provocative sex and language.

This book missed the mark. The author tried to hard to be witty and funny making the story tedious to the reader.
The storyline itself was good but that's where the good ended. The main character and her family's ethnictacity
where highlighted throughout, including phrases in their native language. I only ask "why" was this necessary.

This enemies to lovers book sounded different from the blurb and didn't disappoint. There are so many things to like about this story. The antics are zany. Lina's family is worth the read all on their own. Max is one of the better male characters I have read in this type of romance. Lina is full of contradictions. Their journey to happiness is bumpy, funny, sad, and sweet. There are the perfect amount of steamy scenes. I will be reading this author again.

I love rom-coms and this was another quick read I could easily see turned into a movie. I love the afro-latino representation. There was some Portuguese in this and even though I'm not fluent it was very easy to pick up on what was being said when the words were used. Lina was allowed to be vulnerable and acknowledge that sometimes a a black woman you're expected to be tough all the time and not let your emotions out. Max truly just wanted to see her thriving and happy.

I really felt like this book needed another draft. The bones of the story were cute, but the characters didn't seem real, the dialogue was cringey at times and a lot of the situations didn't seem realistic or organic-- even in the context of a rom-com. I liked the idea that Lina was Brazilian,but the integration of the language, food and culture was awkward and heavy handed. There are good ideas here, they're just not fully realized.

If you're a fan of enemies to lovers romance, this book is for you! The plot was what drew me in. A wedding that ended over confused feelings for someone else, and reconnecting with both men later? I'm on board for that.

Three years ago, Lina was all set to marry Andrew. Sure, he was boring, but boring meant safety from emotions, and so Lina was hooked. Unfortunately, then along came Max, who got drunk, said a few things, and bam. No more wedding. Andrew was out, Lina was confused (but not exactly upset, because of that emotions issue), and Max felt super guilty.

Flash forward to the present. Offered to interview for wedding coordinator at a luxury DC hotel, Lina leaps at the chance. Except she's been paired up with marketing advisors Andrew and Max to make her pitch. Obviously she chooses Max, and sets out to exact her revenge. Hot peppers. Capoeira. Family meetings. Unfortunately, it does nothing to quell the mounting attraction. Eventually they crash a couple's therapy retreat.

All said, this is an adorable little rom-com. The obstacles to Max and Lina's happiness never feel too much like a trope, or overblown. I need Netflix to produce it immediately, thank you.